Epistemology and Logic in the New Testament

Early Jewish Context and Biblical Theology Mechanisms that Fit Within Some Contemporary Ways of Knowing

Douglas W. Kennard

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781532608155
• eBook ISBN: 9781532608162
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Biblical contributors express an oral stage engaging Christianity within a properly basic communal worldview similar to Alvin Plantinga advocates. This approach includes a communal Christian application of common sense realism within a worldview and rhetoric similar to Hillite Pharisaism. Each biblical contributor provided vivid testimony using rabbinic language and thought forms. For example, Jewish-Christian midrash re-appropriates Old Testament quotes and narrative in a new performative pesher manner to present Jesus as the Christ. Moving beyond the word studies of biblical epistemologists, Pharisaic-rabbinic Judaism use of biblical revelation, mystical vision, dream, or audible divine voice frame mystical empiricism similar to William Alston. Non-foundational realism facilitates a communal resilient oral tradition similar to the rabbinics. Additionally, Luke-Acts extensively engages Hellenistic historiographic method and the concept of "witness." When multiple interpretations occur concerning miracles, epistemic dualistic non-foundational Lockean epistemology emerges to contribute to the authority of communal kingdom testimony. Occasionally, this Lockean approach adds an internal transformation much as Jonathan Edwards modified Locke to set forth his religious affections as a divine virtue epistemology confirming the authentic narrow way through Peircean pragmatism. This internal knowledge provides self-referential confirmation for a personal relationship and filial knowledge. Each of these expressions of knowledge fosters an ultimate Kierkegaardian commitment to the Trinitarian Christian God.

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Introduction

The universe of the philosopher and the universe of the biblical exegete rarely cross the same landscape. These disciplines rarely talk with each other. Their distinctive methodologies are rarely shared. This book is an attempt to bridge this rift. Hopefully, if the reader comes from one side of these disciplines they will be encouraged when their side of the conversation is engaged and they can see connections into the other side, exegetes with philosophers and philosophers with exegetes.

As an exegete, I try to keep abreast with biblical issues to inform my teaching graduate students and to contribute in the field of mostly New Testament and biblical theology among the Society for Biblical Literature, Institute for Biblical Research and Evangelical Theological Society.1 The author is aware that sermons and comments in the gospels and Acts are authorial summaries that retain language consistent with the speaker but are selectively reduced for purposes fitting the written text. Within this spectrum of societies, the progressives will date the composition of the New Testament to mostly the second century produced by communities of redactors, while the conservatives and patristics tend to consider that the New Testament is composed during the mid-first century and finished in a repeatedly transmitted version by the end of the first century. The author’s perspective is toward the conservative side and will be argued for within the chapter on Luke’s historiography. Also within this spectrum of societies is the recognition that mid-twentieth century exegesis tended to be dominated by Hellenistic patterns in the wake of Bultmann but with the broad accessibility of early Jewish (and especially Qumran) manuscripts since the nineteen eighties, the Jewish side of N. T. exegesis has risen to a more dominant emphasis in the wake of Weiser, Schweitzer, Davies, Sanders, Dunn, and Wright. This book reflects this dominant interpretation on the Jewish side of N. T. interpretations. Therefore, the epistemic comments in the N. T. books reflect the epistemological concerns of the early Jewish context that surround the speakers and authors of the books. So much of this book explains authorial features engaged with and modifying early Judaism into its younger sister emerging Christianity. In fact, this book could be read as a development of how early Judaism affects biblical Christianity of the N. T.

As a philosopher of religion and one who teaches and writes on religious epistemology and theological method, I try to keep abreast in these fields and to contribute to my graduate students and writing among American Academy of Religion, American Theological Society, Society of Christian Philosophers, and Evangelical Philosophical Society.2 I was asked to write this book in the wake of presenting an earlier expression of the chapter “Epistemology and Logic of the Apostle Paul” to philosophers in the American Academy of Religion, philosophy of religion section. The philosophical community in the twenty-first century has methodology that represents some of these N. T. epistemic methods but many of these methods must be modified to fit more accurately the early Jewish and biblical theology perspectives. My hope is that this book can start a conversation between these two very different worlds to enrich them both.

This book is not an attempt to explain the epistemology of contemporary hermeneutics. I have done that elsewhere positioning myself in the wake of Thiselton and Ricoeur.3 Others have done the similar epistemic engagement for contemporary hermeneutics.4 This book is an attempt to explore a biblical theology topic of the epistemology of Jesus and the N. T. authors in their context to the extent that they explain it within their biblical books. The authors who have accomplished this task before do so reflecting their strength of either exegetical or philosophical awareness5 but do not show the familiarity or interact with the other discipline sufficiently. That is, the unique niche this work is trying to fill is deep engagement with exegesis of biblical authors, early Judaism, and precise epistemic strategies in their respective contexts.

Each chapter draws out an epistemology positioned within testimony of a communal faith or language game of a Christian Pharisaic-Rabbinic worldview. Many of the chapters provide an oral torah that surrounds or extends the written torah of the Pentateuch into a new written tradition through which the early Church understood their Christ centered Trinitarian perspective. Each biblical testimony has its own character and hue. No one chapter pretends to be everyth...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Epistemology and Logic of Jesus as Presented in Matthew and the Other Synoptic Gospels
• Chapter 3: Lukan Historiography and the Epistemology of Gospel Proclamation
• Chapter 4: Petrine Epistemology of Testimony, Prophecy as Proclamation and Evidentialism
• Chapter 5: Epistemology and Logic of the Apostle Paul
• Chapter 6: Johannine Empirical Epistemology with Revelation and Early Jewish Perspectivalism
• Chapter 7: James’ Wisdom Epistemology of Empiricism and Evidence
• Chapter 8: Hebrews Epistemology of Prophecy as Rhetorical Proclamation that Christ is Supreme
• Chapter 9: Putting the N. T. Epistemology Together
• Select Bibliography